Textbook price comparison site saves money and time

Buying textbooks online may be cheaper than buying in store, but searching for inexpensive books takes time. Slugbooks.com cuts your search time by allowing you to compare book prices from your campus bookstore, online retailers and rental companies.

To save money on college textbooks, students can also list books for free that they want to sell on this aggregating site. You can connect via Facebook to post your listing on your wall. Slugbooks e-mails you when an interested person comes along, then you follow up. You and the buyer are then free to work out a price between yourselves. Listing your books on the site is free.

The website is free and easy to use. SlugBooks.com gets paid a small percentage for some of the purchases it refers to their featured purchasing options. It lists more than 30 colleges including UCLA, Ohio University and University of Florida, and for each school the site includes the list of required textbooks for courses. According to David Miller, CEO of SlugBooks.com, they are continuously working to add schools and the textbook lists are obtained from publicly available sources. He added they are committed to making sure the information stays accurate and up to date.

To search for books on the site you must search for your state, college, department and course. If your college is not listed, you can search for your books using the title, author or ISBN. Slugbooks then gives you the opportunity to compare textbook prices to buy, rent or download texbooks from online vendors like Chegg.com, Amazon.com, Half.com and BookRenter.

I searched for a personal finance book that cost me $230 at my campus bookstore and found a rental option through BookRenter for $65.92. What I liked the most is that SlugBooks let’s you browse the first chapter of available textbooks once you purchase them to start reading immediately while you wait for the book to arrive. The site was launched in 2008 by Miller, a UC Santa Barbara alumnus.